My dear Charles will go home with Maj. Jackson. Put him to school and keep him steady.—He
is a delightfull Child, but has too exquisite sensibility for Europe.2

John is gone, a long Journey with Mr. Dana:—he will serve as an Interpreter, <if not a Clerk,> and the Expence will be little more than at Leyden.3 He will be satiated with travel in his Childhood, and care nothing about it, I hope
in his riper Years.

I am distracted with more cares than ever, yet I grow fat. Anxiety is good for my
Health I believe.

Oh that I had Wings, that I might fly and bury all my Cares at the Foot of Pens Hill.

1. As the sole American representative in Europe empowered to discuss terms of peace
with Great Britain, JA had been summoned to Paris by Vergennes to consult on proposals for a joint Russian
and Austrian mediation between the warring powers. He set off from Amsterdam on 2
July and arrived in Paris on the 6th, where he put up at his former residence, the
Hôtel de Valois in the Rue de Richelieu; see his account of travel expenses in Diary and Autobiography, 2:456–457. Not without justification, JA deeply distrusted the motives not only of the imperial mediators but of Vergennes
toward the United States, and for this and other reasons the proposed mediation came
to nothing; see same, 2:458, with references there; also the very full treatment of
the mediation, its background, and its collapse, in Morris, Peacemakers, chs. 8–10.

2. CA's recent illness is alluded to in John Thaxter to JA, 5 April, above, and in following letters. In his “second autobiography” JA said in explanation of his sending CA home at this time: “My second son, after the departure of his brother, found himself
so much alone, that he grew uneasy, and importuned me so tenderly to let him return
to America to his mother, that I consented to that, and thus deprived myself of the
greatest pleasure I had in life, the society of my children.” JA continued: “On or about the 10th [actually, after various and devious maneuvers by the captain, on the 12th] of August, 1781, the South Carolina, commodore Gillon, put to sea from the Texel,
with Mr. Searle, Colonel Trumbull, Major Jackson, Mr. Bromfield, Dr. Waterhouse and
Charles Adams on board as passengers.” (JA, Corr. in the Boston Patriot, p. 572.)

The choice of a ship and commander for CA's conveyance home proved unlucky. After leaving the South Carolina in La Coruña in Spain in September, CA sailed home from Bilbao in a different vessel, the Cicero, Captain Hugh Hill, which at length reached its home port of Beverly, Mass., on 21
Jan. 1782. CA arrived in Braintree on the 29th. Not until June 1782 did AA receive any of the mail put aboard the South Carolina for her ten months earlier. See note on Alexander Gillon under Waterhouse to JA, 26 Dec. 1780, above, with references there; and below, letters to JA and to AA from Gillon, Waterhouse, William Jackson, Richard Cranch, Isaac Smith Sr., and Hugh
Hill. AA's final word on the whole subject is in her letter to JA, 17 June 1782, also below.

Major William Jackson (1759–1828), under whose particular care JA had placed CA during the voyage, was a Charlestonian who had served under Maj. Gen. Benjamin Lincoln
in the latter's southern campaign and had come to Europe with John Laurens' mission
to obtain further aid for the American military effort. JA had recently told Pres. Huntington that “Major Jackson has conducted through the
whole of his Residence here [in Amsterdam], as far as I have been able to observe, with great Activity and Accuracy in Business,
and an exemplary Zeal for the public Service” (27 June 1781, PCC, No. 84, { 171 } III; Wharton, ed., Dipl. Corr. Amer. Rev., 4:522). Some of the military goods, obtained in the Netherlands, were on board the
South Carolina when it sailed surreptitiously from the Texel in August. The erratic conduct of Gillon
led to an early and bitter quarrel between him and Jackson; they parted in Spain and
afterward fought a duel in America, in which Jackson was wounded; see Jackson's correspondence
with JA, Aug.-Dec. 1781, and AA to John Thaxter, 18 July 1782, below. Jackson, who became secretary to Washington when President and afterward
surveyor of customs in Philadelphia, is best remembered as secretary of the Federal
Convention of 1787 (DAB; JQA, Memoirs, 4:174–175).

3. This first allusion by JA to JQA's departure for St. Petersburg was written on JQA's fourteenth birthday. JQA had left Amsterdam on 7 July to join Francis Dana in Utrecht, after JA had already left for Paris; see JQA, Diary, 7 July et seq., for the overland route that he and Dana followed through Germany and Poland to Riga,
Narva, and St. Petersburg, where they arrived on 27 August.

On Dana's mission as the first American minister appointed to Russia but never accredited
by that court, see above, Lovell to AA, 8 Jan., note 5, and references there. JA's recollections in old age, not always reliable in details but in this case correct
in general substance, throw light on the motives of those involved in this unusual
and unexpected incident:

“Congress had ordered [Francis Dana] to go to St. Petersburg, and had sent him a commission as their minister, with instructions
to conclude a treaty of friendship and commerce with the empress of Russia; but they
had given him no secretary of legation, nor made any provision for a private secretary,
or even a copying clerk. They had, moreover . . . reduced Mr. Dana's compensation
below that of the other ministers. Mr. Dana had taken pains to persuade some gentlemen
to accompany him, but could find none that would consent to go. He had before him
the dreary prospect of an immense journey by land, through Holland, Germany, Denmark,
and he knew not how many other nations, of whose languages he knew not one word; and
in the French, which was the travelling language of Europe, he was yet but a student.
In this situation, he requested me to let him have my oldest son, John Quincy Adams,
for a companion and a private secretary or clerk. The youth was, in conversation,
a ready interpreter of French for an American, and of English for a Frenchman; he
could easily translate in writing, as Mr. Dana had seen, any state paper. He wrote
a fair hand, and could copy letters, or any other papers, as well as any other man;
and he had the necessary patience of application to any of these services. I was at
first very averse to the proposition, but from regard to Mr. Dana, at last consented.
I would not however, burthen Mr. Dana with his expenses, but advanced him money for
that purpose, and desired Mr. Dana to draw upon me for more when that should be expended,
which he did. He returned from Russia before Mr. Dana was recalled, and in this interval,
Mr. Dana must have been put to other expenses for clerkship. Mr. Dana agreed with
me in opinion that congress would finally make him a grant for a private secretary
at least, and in that case he was to pay me the money I had advanced, or should advance
for expenses, and nothing more. All this I presume was known to congress, when they
made the grant to Mr. Dana, not for the form but for the substance, for it was Mr.
Dana's right. When Mr. Dana received the grant from Congress, he returned me the sums
I had advanced for expenses and no more. Neither the father nor the son ever received
any thing for services.”

In Dana's Account with the United States, rendered 30 Aug. 1785, the sum requested
for “Mr. John Quincy Adams's Expences in his Journey with Mr. Dana to Petersburgh
during his Residence there as Mr. Dana's Private Secretary and his return to the Hague”
is given as £357 16s 9d (DNA:RG 39, Foreign Ledgers, Public Agents in Europe, 1776–1787, p. 364). The sum finally
allowed when Dana's accounts were settled in 1787 was $2,410 3/19 (PCC, No. 122, Book of Resolves of the Office of Foreign Affairs, 1785–1789, p. 101).

James Lovell to Abigail Adams

[dateline] July 13. 1781

[salute] Ma'am

I have already acknowledged the Receipt of your Favour of June 10th.1 Severely as it concluded in Regard to my Reputation I did not arraign its Justice,
but wrote an ingenuous Confession, similar to one I had before made by the Opportunity
of Genl. Ward.2 I thought your Conclusion was founded upon a natural Construction of what you had
been reading.3 I venerated the Purity of your Sentiments. I was persuaded that no unkind Suspicions guided your Pen. But your Letter of the 23d. of that month wears a different Complexion
from the former. My Fall, Ma'am was not from a Horse, but still it was an “honest”
one. I had been engaged in the most benevolent Way, at my Pen for hours that Evening,
witness, among others my Letter to Mr. Thos. Russel and Mr. Nathl. Barber April 24th.
I was forced out, in the Rain, to procure Money for a Person who wanted it much against
the Dawn of next Morning. I found when abroad that I had misguided a Stranger as to
the Lodging of the Gentleman from whom I was to receive the Money. I meant to rectify
that Error by taking the Stranger with me. I suddenly crossed the Street where I was,
at right Angle; and looking up under my flopped Hatt saw a Vacancy immediately before
me, which I took to be an Alley I had often gone through; but I found that a Shop
had been drawn away and a Cellar 10 feet deep had been dug to receive me. The Consequences
were nearly mortal. I had delivered my Letters at the Office. The giving of early Intelligence to Mr. R of the miserable State of his captive Unkle was honest Employment. The Endeavour to prevent an abrupt Notice to Mr. B of the death of an amiable Son was equally honest. The Seeking of money for one of my Creditors who was then in want of Cash, and the putting of a Stranger into the right Way were both of them honest Works. But, as the Honesty of my Pursuits was no Security
against a Fall, neither has it been a Preventive against false Constructions of that
Destiny. Michael Morgan Obrian, most naturally indeed, concluded that I had staggered sideways drunken into the Dock. Some, as naturally, and One against Nature have supposed I fell dishonestly down a Pair of dark Stairs. I have Hopes of being intirely free from Lameness in the Course of the Summer; and
I am sure that Portia will rejoice at such an Event as my walking rightly for the Rest of my Life.

Give my Compliments to your amorous Friend Cornelia. I hope her Husband never leaves her for a Night. I presume she holds
the { 173 } general opinion that Friendship may be even encreased by Seperation of the Parties; tho, differently from some of
Us, she thinks bodily Presence essential to Love. She may be assured that there is that mixture of Friendship and Love in the Affection
which unites Mrs. L and Me that Presence does not burn up the former, nor Absence
congeal the Latter.

I send you an Extract that will prove the confidential Sincerity of my former Letters
to you. I would not wish that any other should see it. The Friends she alludes to
are perhaps now my Enemies. I sacrifice to my Value for your Good Opinion.4

Yes, I am “Portia's affectionate Friend,” and I did not “mean to retaliate for the Pain she had given me.” I “could” not, I “would” not. Led astray by Cornelia's Fancy, your Mind had taken a “dark” Turn, and you found dreadful Things in an innocent Phraise “on this subject.” Why, Ma'am, in my Thoughts the Subject simply was Absence; and compoundly long Absence,
but in yours it was a Breach of the Commandments and What not.5

I have no Copy of any Letter to you but I imagine I was not very unconnected or enigmatical.
If you had ventured to converse with Mr. S[amuel] A[dams] you would have found that your All is not servile enough to gain the unbounded Affection of the foreign Court at which
he resided when he had the Correspondence which produced the two Resolves of Congress
already communicated to you.6 You would have found that ||Gravier|| wrote two Letters in a Pet against Mr. A to ||old Fkln|| and that the latter had also written a most unkind and stabbing one hither; which
he was under no necessity of doing, as he needed only to have transmitted the Papers
given to him, for the Purpose, by the former. This Knowledge would have prepared you
for my last Letter in Cyphers; and for the Information that Mr. A has now ||no distinct powers.||7 I shall write minutely in Cyphers “on this Subject” to S.A. and you must have it at 2d. hand.8 I will only say for your Satisfaction that I cannot accuse any one or more of any
want of Esteem for Mr. A, but I see him indelicately handled by Means of wrong measures
on a general Scale.

That I may be more at Leisure to be attentive only to senatorial Subjects, I will now close the former by telling you that Mrs. L added
in her Letter “I think, however, you will be obliged to come and show yourself this Fall.”—This you will find is enough, tho it is not founded in her Wishes but
in her Fears. The enevitable ill Consequences which I have proved to you, and the
almost enevitable ones which I was afraid to name to you or to your Husband, who glories
{ 174 } in what I should be sorry for, will not deter me from obeying this Half-Call, which is what I have never had before since I quitted Home.—I add also—That
the Expression, which I wish had never seen Light, was in Fact the Fruit of a Desire
to pass a Compliment upon the Figure and Portrait which Mr. G[erry] had drawn in his Letter, it was indiscretely worded and was very liable to the worst
Interpretation by any one whose Mind was in the least Measure predisposed to make
it.—What is the most decent Day Labour you can think of for me while I am there?9

I do not find Opportunity to send your Boxes. I wish you would keep a good Account
of what I sent: for really I cannot tell. I think I wrote you exactly at the Time
of sending. Mr. Moylan perhaps will give an Invoice some Time or other. J. P. Jones
is on the Road and will see you.

RC (Adams Papers); contains ciphered passages which are here deciphered between double verticals.
(On Lovell's cipher, see Appendix to this volume.) Enclosure: extract from a letter of Mrs. Lovell to James Lovell, not found. MS of the present letter consists of two small sheets each folded into four pages. At
some point in the past, before CFA had the letters received by AA in the 1780's bound up, the second sheet was by mistake attached to Lovell's letter
to her of 15 Sept. (below), the MS of which has a similar physical appearance; and in the Adams Papers, Microfilms it will be found there instead of in its proper place as the second sheet of the
present letter. Because of this mistake a key paragraph, beginning “I have no Copy
of any Letter to you,” was printed by Burnett in Letters of Members, 6:219, under the later and wrong date.

1. Not found. Lovell had acknowledged its receipt in his reply of 2 July, above.

3. In the MS at this point appears the figure 5, or possibly a capital S, in parentheses. This
parallels the use of the same symbol in a cryptic passage in Lovell's letter to AA of 2 July, above, q.v. at note 3.

4. Thus apparently in MS, although because of ink marks that may be blots it is not clear whether a full stop,
a colon, or no punctuation at all was intended by Lovell after the word “Enemies.”

7. Lovell here returns to, and under the protection of ciphered phrases is a little more
explicit about, what was currently happening to French-American relations in Paris
and Philadelphia. The immediate background is given in his letter to AA, 26 June, above; see especially note 4 there on Congress' alteration of JA's peace instructions and its joining him with other commissioners in the peace negotiation.
The incidents which led up to these actions, and which Lovell refers to here, nearly
a whole year later, are set forth above in note 5 on Thaxter to JA, 7 Aug. 1780 (vol. 3:390–395).

“Gravier” is the family name of the French foreign minister, the Comte de Vergennes.
His “two Letters [written] in a Pet against [JA] to old F[ran]kl[i]n” are (1) that dated 30 June 1780, disagreeing with JA's support of Congress' new monetary policy and requesting Congress' reconsideration
of that policy (Wharton, ed., Dipl. Corr. Amer. Rev., { 175 }
3:827); and (2) that dated 31 July 1780, enclosing the mass of his recent correspondence
with JA on other topics in dispute between them, and demanding that the whole of it be submitted
to Congress for appropriate action, by which Vergennes certainly meant a reprimand
(same, 4: 18–19; text of French original quoted at vol. 3:392, above). Franklin's “unkind and stabbing” letter transmitting the documents to Congress
is dated 9 Aug. 1780 and is the fullest comment Franklin ever permitted himself to
make on JA's conduct as a diplomat, contrasting it with his own more accommodating approach
to the French court and condemning the whole concept of what has come to be known
as “militia diplomacy.” The original is in PCC, No. 82, I; it is printed in Franklin's Writings, ed. Smyth, 8:124–130 (see esp. p. 126–128); a normalized text is in Wharton, ed., Dipl. Corr. Amer. Rev., 4:21–25 (see esp. p. 22–23). Relevant portions are quoted in vol. 3:394, above, but to understand the deepening embitterment between the partisans of JA and of Franklin on both sides of the Atlantic, the whole passage dealing with JA should be read and pondered.

Just how Franklin's remarks got into circulation at this time in Boston and vicinity
is not known, but letters that follow in the present volume make clear that they indeed
did and that they stirred up strong feelings there. See AA to Lovell, 14 July; Richard Cranch to JA, 16 July; AA to Elbridge Gerry, 20 July; Gerry to AA, 30 July; all below.

Congress had considered the JA-Vergennes exchanges on 26 Dec. 1780, together with
numerous dispatches from JA dating between the previous July and October (JCC, 18:1194). Not a word was recorded at this time concerning Franklin's dispatch of
9 Aug., which according to the Journals was not read in Congress until 19 Feb. 1781, together with other Franklin letters
and enclosures (same, 19:174). While a good deal of discussion “out-of-doors” must
have followed from the revelation of the disputes between JA and Vergennes, Congress officially noticed only three of the letters read in December,
namely JA to Vergennes, 17 and 26 July, and Vergennes to JA, 25 July, in which JA had asked leave to communicate to the British ministry his powers to negotiate a
commercial treaty, and Vergennes had refused to give such leave (texts in Wharton, ed., Dipl. Corr. Amer. Rev., 3:861–863; 4:3–6, 7–11). A committee consisting of Thomas Burke, John Witherspoon,
and James Duane was appointed to report on these letters (JCC, 18:1194), and on 10 Jan. it brought in a draft of a letter which was agreed to and
sent over Pres. Huntington's signature to JA on that day (same, 19:41–42). Although the letter recognized the “zeal and assiduity”
displayed by JA in his request of Vergennes, it amounted to a rebuke because it approved Vergennes'
reasons for refusing the request (Adams Papers; printed in JA, Works, 7:353; JCC, 19:42).

During the following months La Luzerne, under guidance from Vergennes that was hardly
needed, conducted his campaign among friendly delegates in Congress that culminated
in the measures taken by that body in June to curb JA's freedom of action. A further measure to the same effect was taken the day before
Lovell dated the present letter. This was the outright revocation of JA's commission and instructions to negotiate a treaty of commerce with Great Britain,
issued to him in Sept.–Oct. 1779 simultaneously with his peace commission (see Diary and Autobiography, 4:179–180, 183–184; see also vol. 3:230–233, above). The immediate initiative for this had come from the committee of conference
with La Luzerne in May, and an attempt was made on 19 June to transfer these powers
from JA to the five newly named peace commissioners (of whom JA was one), but this failed at the moment (JCC, 20:619, 676). After further maneuvers which cannot be traced here, James Madison
moved on 12 July that JA's commercial powers be revoked and that, among other things, the peace commissioners
be instructed to place the territorial claims of the United States all the way to
the Mississippi on an equal footing with its claims to the Atlantic fisheries—neither
of these claims being any longer ultimatums because of the alterations in the instructions
for peace and the contemplated revocation { 176 } of JA's commission to negotiate a treaty of commerce. This motion passed by a large majority,
only the New England delegates dissenting (same, 713–714, 746–747; Madison, Papers, ed. Hutchinson, 3:188–189). Madison's multiple and complex motives have been discussed by Brant
in his Madison, 2:143–145, from Madison's point of view. Justly or not, Madison had by this time
come to distrust JA's egotism and impulsiveness, his New Englandism, and his suspected partiality for
British as opposed to French interests. Subsequent events deepened Madison's prejudices
toward JA, as will later appear.

JA's view of these transactions was that they constituted the most humiliating stroke
ever dealt him in the house of his supposed friends. See his confidential conversation
in Jan. 1783 with Benjamin Vaughan as recorded in Diary and Autobiography, 3:103–105; also his letter to Secretary R. R. Livingston, 5 Feb. 1783, in which he endeavored
to reconstruct Congress' motives, as shaped by French intrigue, and to show how mistaken
they were (LbC, Adams Papers; JA, Works, 8:33–40).

8. No letter from Lovell to Samuel Adams on this subject at this time has been found.
In forwarding to JA the resolution of 12 July, Lovell was laconic in his official note for the Committee
of Foreign Affairs, but he added a “private” postscript, partly in cipher, that was
more revealing:

“The whole of the Proceedings here in regard to your two Commissions are, I think,
||ill-judged but|| I persuade myself no ||dishonou[r] int||ended[. T]he business greatly in every View ||chagrins me.||[T]his you will have learnt from my former Letters written in an half-light”

9. The allusions in this paragraph can be only partially clarified. The “ill Consequences”
of Lovell's now seriously contemplated return home would be poverty, which JA might glory in but Lovell would not. It would appear from this and similar remarks
elsewhere in Lovell's correspondence that he feared outright impoverishment if he
gave up his seat in Congress. (See especially Lovell to Gerry, 13 July and 14 Sept.,
MHi: Gerry-Knight Coll.; and Lovell to AA, 10 Aug., below.) The letter from Gerry to Lovell here mentioned must have been one of the
several acknowledged in Lovell's by now notorious intercepted reply of 20 Nov. 1780
(see AA to Lovell, 17 March, above, and notes and references there).